What is Ansible Automation Hub and why should you use it?

Many Ansible users know about Ansible Galaxy—the Ansible project’s community repository for sharing Ansible content. While Ansible Galaxy is great for testing the latest and greatest developer content, it’s difficult to know which content is supported, and which content is people just uploading stuff. In a lot of ways, it’s like an app store with no rules.

This is where Ansible Automation Hub comes in.

What is Ansible Automation Hub?

Ansible Automation Hub gives you a way to easily discover and download Ansible Content Collections—bundles of modules, plug-ins, roles and documentation from Red Hat and certified Red Hat partners.

Ansible collections lower the barrier of entry to automation by providing a consistent content delivery mechanism, including pre-built automation content. These can save teams an enormous amount of time and effort, with the added assurance that the content they’re using has been fully vetted and certified by Red Hat.

5 reasons to use Ansible Automation Hub

Here are five reasons you should take advantage of the Ansible collections available through Ansible Automation Hub, rather than relying on Ansible Galaxy.

1. Red Hat certified content

The secure Ansible Automation Hub portal gives you direct access to trusted  Content Collections from Red Hat and certified Red Hat partners. You can browse these by topic or by the partner that created them.

For example, some of the Ansible collections maintained by Red Hat include roles for:

• Amazon AWS

• Ansible Netcommon

• Ansible Posix

• Arista  EOS

• Cisco ASA, Cisco IOS, Cisco IOS XR, Cisco NX-OS

• Free Range Routing

• IBM Qradar SIEM

• Juniper JunOS

• Kubernetes Collection for Ansible

• OpenvSwitch

• Red Hat Insights

• Red Hat Satellite

• ServiceNow ITSM

• Splunk Enterprise Security

• VyOS

• ...and more

You can learn more about these official Red Hat Ansible Content Collections here.

2. Reuse code and get started faster

You can get up and running quickly with Ansible collections, which include bundled modules and roles for specific domains and IT platforms. You can even just copy and paste content directly into your own Ansible playbooks.

Red Hat tests and reviews the modules and roles for content quality before publishing them in Ansible Automation Hub.

3. Ansible private automation hub

If you happen to create your own Ansible content, the Ansible private automation hub gives you a way to publish and collaborate on it within your organization behind your firewall or on disconnected systems. 

This provides organizations with a single source of truth, making it easy to manage and control the life cycle of your Ansible content.

4. Premium support

Ansible Automation Hub is created and managed by Red Hat, with standard or premium support options available.

This means that if you have an issue with an official Red Hat Ansible collection or certified partner collection, Red Hat’s support team will help you with the issue directly.

If you have a problem with another item in Ansible Automation Hub, Red Hat will help guide you to get the support you need.

5. Included with your Red Hat subscription

Ansible Automation Hub is included with your Red Hat subscription. If you’re a subscriber, you have free and unlimited access to any content available.

Not sure what a Red Hat subscription is all about? You can learn about it here: The Red Hat subscription model.

Learn more

If you’d like a quick video tour of the Ansible Automation Hub that shows you how to find and use the available Ansible collections, check out the first episode of “Automated Live!”

As an added bonus, this short video series doubles as a quick and humorous way to explain the basics of automation to people you might be trying to convince to give it a try.

You can find the whole video series here: Automated Live! A video collection hosted by Colin McNaughton.